like it isn't possible
by If I Could I Wouldn't
Summary: Jace, determined to make his childhood crush – and best friend – fall in love with him, sets himself a target of one year to do just that. Unfortunately for him not everything goes exactly to plan. "What's with the aftershave, you smell like you've been stuck in a room with skunks for the past three days." "Ehhhhh…" INDEFINITE HIATUS.
1. (A Year Before) December

_So, I'm back to my fluffy, humorous roots. At least, until I'm not. Anyway, this whole plan was concocted with my two friends, **I prefer to remain anonymous **(check her out), and as we shall call her, **Red. **__Also, a big thanks to my beta **AnnaW14, **who has great stories that you should all read right now. Anyway, that's it so, read on._

_The title, for which I had many ideas and inputs by various people (like, two), is now finally settled on something that is completely removed from it - **starlight promises. **__So don't think that has any meaning about anything, but it was inspired by the line **gold-lit promises** in Lorde's Gory and Gore._

_On a side note: I haven't read CoHF, so nothing that happens in the book will effect anything in this fanfiction. Even so my friends practically told me everything that happens, but this is fluff and people can't just drop dead in fluff. And I love Raphael, even if I did call that one._

_Enjoy and please leave a review, it's been ages since I've written anything good enough or interesting enough or something I've actually finished to put of fanfiction. _

_/_

_December (the year before__** the year**__)_

A pencil twirled from in between my fingers, sometimes catching on the table I was sitting at. The bright yellow that was painted on was peeling, revealing patches of wood. If I was to measure its exact size it would barely be able to sit behind my ear without falling off.

In short, it was a very worn and used pencil.

The reason being fluttered onto my desk the exact moment, a white dart against the scratched surface.

I sighed, glancing up at the teacher – not actually worried that she would notice – only to see that she was firmly stuck in a game of solitaire on her computer, and then turned to the harbinger of the note.

Clary grinned back at me, all teeth and dimples, her green eyes darted to the paper and back to my own, a clear signal that I should read it.

I rolled my eyes, and then opened the paper with practised fingers, unfolding the crumpled and stained paper. Inside, various scribbles and figures were drawn onto the paper, cartoons depicting animals in various poses, from mice with giant glasses perched on his nose, his eyes comically big behind the lenses, to a lion sitting with his mane in pigtails.

My eyes flicked past all the images, darting to each on, but then came to rest on what was clearly the point of the forbidden act of sending messages to your friends.

In Clary's hand writing, a squished thing, sharp and jagged but with following curves, she had written _winter dance?_

I chuckled, trying to resist my immediate instinct to write _YES!,_ and, after checking that Miss was still indeed in an online battle, wrote my reply and threw it back to her.

_I would have thought you would have more class than asking via owl in a maths lesson._

She clicked her tongue, as she waited for me to respond from yet another pass of the paper. _You know that you're supposed to ask me, this is the best you're going to get._

_I grinned. If you must know I was going to ask you today, by your locker… with balloons._

_How did you put balloons in my locker?_

_A Lightwood never reveals their secrets_. I winked at her when she went to glare at me.

Another whoosh of air. _You looked in my phone didn't you?_

_It's not my fault you have to write everything down because you have the worst memory I have ever had the displeasure of having to find out not to trust._

She huffed, narrowed her eyes at me, and grabbed her pencil, she quickly wrote something back and all but hurled it back at me. Unfortunately for her, her aim was never the best and it went wide, hitting one of the paper models that hung from the ceiling so low that even the below average students hit them when they walked past.

The triangle swung back and forth above Isabelle's desk as both mine and Clary's eyes widened at the mishap.

A curse echoed in my head as I made furious motions for her to hand me the fucking bane of my life back to me.

But, this was Isabelle, and nothing with Isabelle was ever easy.

The note, inevitably as it would do landing on her table, was read, and a smile, devious in intent spread across the Lightwood girls face. Even those not familiar with her would know this couldn't be good, because by the way she was suddenly smug and staring at the both of them with knowing eyes she had figured something out.

_Or she had thought she had figured something out because there could be no way she could have known anything from that._ I was trying, and failing to comfort myself. I knew that Isabelle had guessed what I had been feeling for Clary, in fact she had cornered me about it, with had resulted to a frantic look of shock and then a spluttered what are you talking about? I had not in any way had made her believe that I wasn't crushing on my best friend.

(It didn't occur to me that by looking at the note all she would see was a snarky friend beating up their friend with their wit and power. Then again, in Isabelle's world that was a sign of attraction – the sad thing was that it worked for her and so far, not for me when I was clearing the better of the two of us.)

A ripping sound, that of paper being ripped apart from paper, and then a pen scratching. Great, now _little miss i-know-you-like-your-friend_ is getting involved.

My head hit the table, hard, but the sharp spike of pain didn't bother me when I had more pressing things to think about.

Like the new occupant of my desk. Crisp, white paper, fresh, new, hardly touched and a foreboding presence.

I licked my lips for a split second, ignored the weird look that Clary was giving me and the cocky grin that Isabelle was wearing, and opened the note.

_Just. Tell. Her_. The further down. _I will if you don't._

The rest of the lesson was spent in a frenzy of contained worry. And afterwards, without a second look at my ginger best friends I grabbed my sister and dragged her off towards the gym before she could even get a word in edgeways to Clary about _anything._

/

"No." I said through clenched teeth for what seemed like the one hundredth time.

Isabelle rolled her eyes, and let out yet another sigh. "I just don't see why you can't just say it. It's not that hard."

"Oh and you would know would you?"

"Simon."

Well there was my argument down the drain. "I just… can't." Wow, I was really doing well with the whole master of words thing wasn't I?

I could almost feel Isabelle's frustration as she turned away, fingers to her temples. A few minutes were spend like this, her eyes closed, thinking hard, while I watched, head tilted to the side.

"I've got it." She finally said, glee evident in her voice, she spun around, a manic happiness in her eyes as she stood directly eye to eye with me. "You have one year."

And maybe I was a little slow when it came to huge revelations that hadn't been stated yet. "For what?"

She let out an exasperated breath, not happy that I couldn't follow her thought process when she didn't tell me anything. "I mean, that you have one year to make her fall in love with you." At my wide eyes, she continued, "if you don't I can always tell her now." She inched towards the door.

"No wait," I started, "it's not that. It's just, I'm not _in love with her_ I just _like her_."

Isabelle shrugged, "whatever helps you sleep at night. It'll start on New Year's." With that she left, leaving me to try and plot new ways on just how I was to fill the next twelve months with the most romantic things I could think off, ones that could defiantly not be passed off as friendly friend curiosity.

/

_This should be around thirteen or fourteen chapters, since it'll go through the months (yeah, I can't write 365 chapters) and will be extra funny and fluffy. Just for you guys._

_As a side note I still haven't read CoHF, but my friend has told me everything so anything that happened there does not apply to here. (Since sometimes it reflects it in AU.)_

_Thanks guys. Review?_

_Snowfire._


	2. January (In Which Nothing Happened)

_Oh my God, I'm so sorry for how later this is and how shit this is. I just wanted to provide you with something to let you know that yes, I am alive. I won't be updating soon because I'm going to Turkey for a few weeks after school finishes but after that my whole summer is free so hopefully I'm have some fluff for you._

_Also, I have a poll on my page about the most liked unpopular ship. Go vote and I'm either write a separate piece on it, or include a little bit of that ship in here. I'm sure that the Clary I've created here wouldn't be opposed to kissing Isabelle._

_Again, thanks to my awesome beta, AnnaW14, who is awesome and my friends who helped me with this idea._

_/_

"Jace, Jace. Can you just… look at me?" Alec snapped his fingers in front of my face a few times, to which I remained unblinking and unknowing (or I did know – I just didn't show weakness). "No, no? Ok." He gave up (score) and slouched into the nearby chair (fuck).

"I think," he let out a whistle of air through his nose, "that all this… brooding isn't good for you." He gets off the chair, which sort of defeats the point of ever sitting down in the first place, and resumes his little speech, because even the lightest of topics grew to become mighty battles of will power and opinion with my brother. "And so, I am going to force you outside, and away from the wall you keep staring at, if it's the last thing I ever manage to do before you kill me."

I didn't realise what he meant until only seconds before, and even then I was shocked when his boyfriend – in all his leopard print glory – ran right from behind him and poured water all over me.

I lifted my head a few inches upwards and glared at the grinning pare. Magnus, with his job finished, turned, pecked Alec on the cheek and walked out, laughter audible. The wall suddenly became very interesting again.

Alec sighed. "Really Jace, really?"

"Do you think?" He looked up from where his head rested in his hands, clearly wondering if I was going to stop brooding as he put it. Well that wasn't happening. "That if I developed telekinesis Clary would go out with me?"

Alec groaned, flopping onto the desk. "Oh, my God."

I continued, gaze fixated on the wall, "we could be in bed, cuddling –" ('you should ask her first before you try and do that Jace. Otherwise I think it's called harassment.') "- and then I could just, snap my fingers and make breakfast appear right in front of her, while still being there."

"I don't think that's telekinesis Jace…"

I held up a finger. "Of course it is, now shhh, and leave me to continue my practise."

He started at me for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out if I had always been this weird or if this whole 'one year' thing was getting to my head. After coming to his conclusion – which I firmly believed to be the latter – he got up, chuckled once and then left the room.

The rest of my day was spent staring at an unmoving ball. No ideas, or new abilities, enlightened me that day.

_Life sucks._

/

No one ever asks me if I'm with Clary. And I know that maybe I'm not the most popular or socially adept person to ever grace the earth, but I would have at least thought that the idea – which always was asked in whatever romantic comedy Isabelle forced me through – would have at least crossed at least one person with enough confidence to say it.

That was not the case.

Maybe the idea of an awkward and sarcastic who didn't look quite content in his own skin with a girl who had several piercings, was seen more times with her sketchbook than actual human beings and had been caught numerous times with a girl in one of the bathroom stalls didn't quite feel right in people's minds.

(Though how so was beyond my understanding.)

Something small, red and smelling of oil and sharpie crashed into my side, knocking me onto the floor.

And maybe that was when I reconsidered the thought that I was a romantic – who calls the girl they had been plotting to get with for a month that they smelt of oil and sharpie?

"Oh my God Jace, I feel like t has been forever since I saw you." And so beings, as it did every time we tried to have a civilized conversation, the torrent that poured out of her mouth that she called coherent. "Have you seen the new art studio, it looks amazing, and the new kids, they're all looking like they want to drown in a hole. Do you think we looked like that? Actually forget that, I know you did. Remember when you were sick in the toilet because someone had spiked your food on the first day?"

I reached up for her hand, since whenever she did this she never seemed to land on the floor like I did.

"You were sent home, and then Sebastian came to look after me, and you know how I feel about him. It was only last year that he managed to get rid of that fish smell that filled the whole classroom. Science lessons were awful, all that heat and fish."

I nodded along with her, trying to tune her out, but stupid hormones decided that today I had to hang onto her every word so that I could just hear her voice. (She had a lovely voice, or velvet and sweetness; if only she would lose the pencil then maybe I could get close to her without stabbing myself in the eye.)

"But anyway, enough about that what about you, how has your holidays been?" She smiled up at me, teeth white and gleaming.

I could tell the truth, I could spit out the words, lying in bed and listening to the Twilight soundtrack on repeat while tearing through at least half a dozen romance novels and staying up late to watch happy couples make out on screen. I could say that I had spent more money on ice cream than I ever had managed to spend on games.

Instead, all that came out was: "the usual, being humiliated by my parents."

She nodded knowingly, winking at me before she turned away to go talk to however had called her name before. I was just glad that she didn't see me collapse into the nearby chair from the exhaustion of keeping a conversation with her when she was practically on top on me.

_I'm so screwed._

/

Needless to say nothing happened that month, other than her getting into a fight, me trying to defend her and ending up unconscious on the ground.

I have a chipped tooth now.

/

_I tried to make Jace slightly awkward but not as bad as my Jace in Shelter, also Clary is annoyingness and cute all in one. (Much annoying Clary in this one, sorry.)_

_Thank you all for the reviews, especially to those who credited my Jace characterisation and his relationship with Isabelle. I love both of them dearly, and Isabelle is just hella and I need to write something where she makes out with Clary. _

_Please leave some more lovely reviews (even if this chapter is shit) and check out that poll._

_Thank you all, _

_Snow._

_(P.S. Check out my tumblr - maliqtate and/or come talk to me via messaging or PM. Internet is supposed to help my get more friends :))_


	3. the end of the time (oops marvel)

_Eh, this is just a notice because I'm leaving and yeah, it's been totally awesome and I love you all but I can't write on this site anymore._

_I will be leaving my works up (baring Shelter) so you can still enjoy them and I will be answering PM's but otherwise I'm on indefinite hiatus._

_Anyway, if you do like my writing (which I feel has greatly improved as I published it onto this site) you'll find my newer stuff on my tumblr, works for fandom like Teen Wolf and The 100._

_So yeah, anyway thank you all._

**_(Oh, and if you would like to take this story (credit please) just drop me a PM and I'm give you the first chapters and the _****_really shitty_****_ draft I put together.)_**


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